Digital printing is changing the printing industry. In digital printing, a customer creates an electronic version of a document and sends it to a printer operator for final formatting, printing, and assembly on selected printing devices. Digital printing is mutually advantageous to both the customer and the printer operator: the customer has greater control over what the final document will look like because the electronic version that he creates accurately communicates his vision to the printer operator; and the printer operator spends less time in formatting the document because he can immediately appreciate the customer's vision of the final printed document, and he can return a corrected electronic version to the customer for the customer's proofing and approval. Thus the printer operator and the customer may refine a document together before the final print run by means of a shared electronic version.
The customer typically sends a job to the printer operator in pieces or he creates a cohesive document in an electronic form using print document creation software, such as that provided by Adobe Systems Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. under the name, “Acrobat.” The print document creation software allows customers to combine elements of the document from text files, image files, and outputs of other computer programs into the cohesive document. For example, a document may simultaneously contain text to be printed in a selected font from a word processor output file, a bitmapped image stored as a graphics file, and the output from a spreadsheet program. The print document creation software typically presents the customer with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (“WYSIWYG”) image on a computer monitor that represents the final print document. The print document creation software incorporates the contents of files into the document, provides layout functions for scaling and combining the various elements on the page, displays the layout on the computer monitor, and outputs a composite electronic document for storage and transfer. Also, editing and rearrangement of the elements may be immediately viewed on the computer monitor. In such a manner, customers have substantial autonomy over the contents and layout of the document while creating the electronic version, unencumbered by considerations of the printing devices and the media on which they print.
The printer operator is responsible for creating a final, cohesive, print document for production. If the customer sends his print job to the printer operator as separate pieces or separate files, the printer operator typically assembles a cohesive document as a WYSIWYG file. Alternatively, the customer submits the print job to the printer operator already in the form of a WYSIWYG file. When the document is ready for printing, the printer operator directs the pages of the document to various printing devices, each of which are appropriate for printing a particular format and media. For example, the printer operator may designate that pages of the document having color graphics are to be printed on a color printing device, but that pages of the document having only text are to be printed on a black-and-white printing device, rather than the color printing device, in order to save some money for the customer and more efficiently use the printer operator's resources. Thus the printer operator typically groups pages of the document together for separate printing on an appropriate printing device.
A printing device may have attached to it one or more finishing devices. After printing, the pages pass through one of the available finishing devices that are attached to the printing device. The finishing device processes the printed pages in furtherance of completion of the print run, and may perform more than one finishing operation on the pages. The printer operator may explicitly designate the finishing device that processes the output of the printing device. For example, the finishing device may collate the printed pages into separate groups and then staple each group together. Alternatively, the finishing device may perform only one finishing operation, such as stacking. But even if the finishing device is able to perform some of the finishing operations requested by the printer operator, it may not be capable of performing those operations on the print job as output by the printing device. For example, the printing device may output a print job on large size media but the available collator can only process medium and small size media. Thus, the printer operator has also to consider the capabilities of the finishing devices attached to each printing device when directing pages of the document to the printing device.
The attributes of each finishing device attached to a printing device are stored in memory in the printing device. The attributes are typically included in a software release by the vendor of the printing device. Adding another finishing device to the printing device whose attributes are not stored in the memory, however, requires the vendor to write, debug, and distribute a new software release to support the added finishing device. The finishing devices that can be attached to the printing device are therefore limited to those whose attributes reside in the printing device's memory. The printing device is therefore not sufficiently flexible to allow for the attachment of a new finishing device without a software upgrade.
Also, the printer operator or customer may request a specific finishing operation or finishing device after printing by the printing device. The customer or the printer operator can request the specific finishing operation or device in the WYSIWYG file. Currently, however, the printing device has to determine whether it has the appropriate finishing device attached to it and programmed into the software in the printing device. If the printing device does have the appropriate finishing device attached and the software installed, the printing device sends the output to the specific finishing device. But without the software upgrade, the printing device cannot automatically determine whether the printing device has an appropriate finishing device in response to instructions in the WYSIWYG file and configure itself to send its output to the finishing device. Additionally, the printing device cannot automatically select among more than one finishing devices absent instructions in the WYSIWYG file or configuration by the printer operator.
It is therefore desirable that the printing device ascertains the attributes of the finishing devices that are attached to it without a software upgrade. Such a feature may be useful for attaching new finishing devices to the printing device.
It is also desirable that the printing device is able to select the appropriate finishing device in response to instructions from the shared electronic version of the document. Such a feature may be useful to allow the customer or printer operator to include instructions for finishing in the WYSIWYG file during some or all stages of the document production.
It is further desirable that the printing device is able to select the most appropriate finishing device according to predetermined criteria in the absence of instructions in the shared electronic version of the document. Such a feature may be useful to allow the customer or printer operator to leave the choice of finishing to the printing device.